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Old 04-26-2002, 06:11 AM  
railz
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Join Date: Nov 2001
Posts: 2,531
Quote:
Originally posted by Juge

You said it uses the DirectX engine - do you mean that DirectX manages which polys are in the view space and need to be drawn? I know that DirectX can handle all the calculations of the points (conversion from 3D -> the 2D screen), and the rotation of all points, but you need a lot more than this to make a full 3D engine.
A simple linked list with a spline/sine wave table can produce any curve you want to. DirectDraw is pretty powerful now.

Granted, a full 3D engine takes a lot of work (most devs outsource to a templated engine nowadays and modify it to suit, especially in client->server games), but this coder was aiming for (a) speed and (b) compression.

Even if he used point sprites for some of it, the file size wouldn't be that huge. Map a texture using the vertices of three points onto a poly, and presto - you have a textured surface.

If I remember correctly

Quote:

And, that's a lot of different effects and camera movements to all stuff in 64kb.
Directx handles camera positions as three vectors - the postition of the camera, the vector that points "up" and the point to be looked at.

BTW this is called a "left hand view matrix" - and camera flybys can be made in an extremely small amount of space.


This is an impressive bit of coding.
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